"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres”. ["Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are."] - Spanish proverb

Kim Jong-Un shakes hands with Jose Ramon Balaguer, head of the Intl Dept of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee in Pyongyang. (2013)

Over the years well meaning people at the United Nations Human Rights Council have asked: "Is Cuba changing?" The response provided has been: Have you seen any changes in their behavior here? The response continues to be "no." The confusion is understandable especially if one gets their "news" from The New York Times.

However, thanks to the internet and Google news one has access to a wide range of information and the facts underline the continuing brutal and repressive nature of the dictatorship in Cuba at home and abroad.

May heaven’s punishment be visited on Obama, the world’s sole juvenile delinquent

(KCNA, Tokyo) The DPRK’s official news agency, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), announced a variety of reactions of citizens of the DPRK to the National Defense Commission’s statements on Obama’s visit to South Korea.

Hideous monkey-man

My innards were twisted and torn when I saw Obama’s ugly mug.

Dark head-dome and dull gray eyes, cavernous nostrils, thick-lipped maw, the more I gaze at him, the more I see him as a monkey in a primeval African forest.

His shape is like a beanstalk, and he scampers about with his arms flailing beside him, and scurries whenever he rides on a airplane or stands on a platform. It’s phenomenal how similar he looks to a monkey.

I am sure Obama is a monkey and doubt he is a human, because he behaves badly at every occasion, like a monkey who can’t stay calm and swings his red butt, and climbs up this and that tree and picks fruit, or picks up food from the ground.

He is unworthy to gorge himself in the south [Korean] land he has crawled into. Now he is casting his greedy eye at the north [Korean] land.

The more I see of him, the more convinced I am from his looks, behavior, and his cross-breed blood, which is impure blood, that Obama is born of a monkey.

One who is far from being a politician, and is instead an ugly sub-human, should not dare stab his finger at our dignified independent state, our republic the people’s paradise, like a raven arguing that he is whiter than the heron.

Obama is a failure and the scum of the ages without any status or right to speak filth (literally, chew the rag) about us.

Obama remains like a monkey even though the human race has evolved for millions of years. What is the habitat of such a man?

He is suitable to live among a troop of monkeys in the world’s largest African animal park, and licking at the bread crumbs tossed by onlookers.

Obama must immediately go into a monkey’s nest, carrying food over his shoulders, before he falls into contempt in the divine human world.

Communists have a long history of unsavory alliances with racist regimes stretching back 75 years to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, therefore the racist rants of the North Koreans should not come as a great surprise. However, that the dictatorship in Cuba that rules over an island with a populace which in its majority is of African descent would be defending this openly racist dictatorship and collaborating so closely with it should give one pause in the media campaign to rehabilitate the image of the Castro regime.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

"Twoyears and fourmonths withoutHaroldandOswaldo. Forjustice to be doneforan end to impunityof the junta." - Christian Liberation Movement over twitter on November 22, 2014

Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero killed in suspicious incident on July 22, 2012

Aid to the Church in Need is a Pontifical Foundation of the Catholic Church presented a country profile on Cuba that highlighted the July 22, 2012 death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas but failed to mention that Harold Cepero had also been killed following the incident with the car and misspelled the opposition youth leader's name. Its been corrected in the excerpt below. Also reported on a April 2013 violent attack on a Pentecostal pastor who he tried to file a legal complaint against local Communist
Party officials. The attack left him with permanent
brain damage.

Death of pro-democracy campaigner

..."And then in July 2012 came
the death in suspicious circumstances of Oswaldo Paya, the driving force
behind the Varela Project, a pro-democracy movement. The government
stated that the driver had lost control of the vehicle but Mr Paya's
family said the car had been deliberately run off the road. Mr
Paya was a Catholic and, while in many respects his co-religionists saw
significant improvements, the experience of some Protestant groups was
very different. In 2013, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported violent
beatings of Protestant ministers in different parts of the country.
There was criticism of the Office of Religious Affairs and its efforts
to control and monitor religious groups – especially with regard to
importing religious books and other materials from abroad and receiving
donations from overseas."

...

Progress and problems in Cuba

March 2011:
Eight political prisoners were released; one being part of a group of 75
people arrested during the “Black Spring” – a government crackdown on
so-called “dissidents” campaigning for greater freedom. They were part
of the Varela Movement, named after Fr Felix Varela - Catholic priest
and independence campaigner.
Source: Fides, 5/3/11

June 2011:
Church leaders complained that although the government had authorised
Catholic and Protestant religious services in prisons in 2009,
permission was not always granted. The situation for non-Christian
religious groups was worse, with no provision for them to organise or
hold their own services. Religious rights were often violated as a form
of punishment, with religious literature confiscated and prisoners
denied religious visits – especially prisoners of conscience.
Source: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Cuba: Summary of Concerns, 1/6/11

September 2011: Some
‘Ladies in White’ were arrested after attending Mass in Santiago to
celebrate the feast of Cuba’s patron saint, Our Lady of Charity. The
‘Ladies; were regularly prevented from attending church services. On
dozens of occasions Ardisnidia Cruz, mother of political prisoners
Marcos and Antonio Lima-Cruz, was prevented from leaving her Holguin
house on Sundays for Mass. In 2013 the Ladies in White again reported
acts of intimidation.
Source: US State Department – International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Las Damas De Blanco website

March 2012: Pope
Benedict XVI visited Santiago de Cuba and Havana. Weeks before his
arrival, monitoring organisations state that more than 100 dissidents
had been arrested. During the Pope’s three day visit, about 200 Cuban
critics were banned from attending Masses and other public celebrations.
Some were threatened with arrest if they left their homes and their
phone lines were cut.

April 2012: Good Friday was
made a public holiday in Cuba for the first time in 40 years, following
the request of Benedict XVI. All religious holidays were cancelled
after the 1959 revolution.
Source: Fides, 3/4/12; BBC News online, 6/4/12

July 2012:
Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement was killed in
a ‘suspicious’ car crash. He had helped mastermind a pro-democracy
movement calling for freedom of speech and assembly for which he had
received a number of awards. Mr Paya and fellow activist Harold Cepero, a
Swedish politician, were being driven but died when the car crashed.
The regime announced that the car had come off the road, crashing into a
tree. Mr Paya’s family and another passenger insisted that it had been
deliberately bumped off the road. 50 activists were arrested before and
after Mr Paya’s funeral Mass.

January 2013: In
accordance with President Raul Castro’s stated policy to return Church
property seized by the revolutionary regime in 1961, officials in
Santiago de Cuba announced that two churches and a pastoral centre would
be returned. The Secretary of the Provincial Assembly of the People's
Power told Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez that the Church of St.
Joseph the Worker and Church of St Benedict would be returned. Further
reports indicated plans for the return of church buildings in Havana.
Source: Fides 26/01/13; Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba website

March 2013: For the second year running, a government decree made Good Friday a public holiday.
Source: Fides 26/1/13; Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba website

April 2013:
For the first time in years multiple reports have been received of
violent beatings of Protestant pastors in different parts of the
country. Additionally, week after week, scores of men, women and
sometimes children were physically and violently dragged away by state
security agents from Sunday morning services.
Source: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Religious Freedom in Cuba, 1/4/13

April 2013:
The Pentecostal pastor of a church in Holguin was left with permanent
brain damage after a violent attack while traveling from home to the
provincial capital to file a legal complaint against local Communist
Party officials who had illegally confiscated his car. Similar attacks
against members of Protestant churches have increased in the last year.
Source: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 3/4/13

Thursday, November 20, 2014

“Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show solidarity to those who are only striving for it in uneasy conditions.” - Vaclav Havel

Nonviolent demonstration at the Mexican Consulate in Miami for 43 missing students

Over the past few weeks have been following the terrible news concerning 43 students who went missing on September 26, 2014 in Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero in Mexico and are now feared dead. This crime hits close to home for Cubans especially in 2014 which is the 20th anniversary of the "13 de Marzo"tugboat massacre were 37 were killed, who in their majority were youth. At the same time having already witnessed the spectacle of the government of Venezuela's involvement in the killing of their youth engaged in nonviolent protests makes this year a particularly difficult one.

At the Mexican Consulate earlier this evening

Today joined with others at the Mexican Consulate in Miami to demand truth and justice for the 43 students missing in Ayotzinapa and over the social networks helped to spread the word in what was a global action. Times like these we need to get out from behind our computers and stand together in the solidarity of the shaken.

In Miami on November 20, 2014 at 5pm in the Mexican Consulate in downtown (1399 SW 1st Avenue Miami, FL 33130) join with Mexican activists in a
nonviolent protest denouncing the crime while demanding justice and the
return of the 43 missing students to their loved ones. Please dress in black Protests also planned in Santa Ana, CA; Dallas, TX and elsewhere.

Signing an online letter from Amnesty International
calling on the Mexican government to bring all responsible to justice,
acknowledge that this is not an isolated case, and for the government to
uphold 2012 commitment to eradicate torture and ill treatment of all
detainees.

Writing opeds, letters to the editor, spreading the word over social
media on the internet in order that others may take concrete action on
behalf of these 43 students.

Meanwhile efforts by political partisans to take advantage of the situation to advance a particular agenda needs to be quashed while truth and justice serve as a guide to action on behalf of the 43. For example, Venezuelan Analysis republished an article of Tamara Pearson of the Venezuela and Cuban sponsored television network TELESUR titled 43 Lives, 2 Countries slandering the victims of the Maduro government killed during anti-government protests in 2014 while at the same time failing to mention that in the case of the 43 disappeared students in Mexico the government officials identified as having colluded with a drug gang in taking the students are members of a left wing political party with ties to both Venezuela and Cuba.

Both Mexico and Venezuela are in the grips of waves of violence that have claimed tens of thousands of lives. Mexico with a population of 122.3 million according to the preliminary numbers published by the National Statistics Institute, (Inegi) had 22,732 homicides in 2013, equivalent to 22 per 100,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, Venezuela with a population of 30.41 million according to the Venezuelan Observatory on Violence, estimates that 24,000 people were murdered in 2013, according to the United Nations and the World Bank the number per capita is 54 per 100,000 inhabitants and is considered the second most likely place to be murdered on the planet with Honduras in first place. The bottom line on murder rates is that you are 2.5 times more likely to be murdered in Venezuela than in Mexico.

Some of the Venezuelan youth shot in the head in 2014 during protests

However, the questions surrounding the 43 Venezuelans and 43 Mexicans murdered in a political context in 2014 resonate in both countries and raise fundamental questions of governance.

Since February 12, 2014 forty three Venezuelans have been killed during protests against rising insecurity and vanishing rights in their country. Over 5,000 have been injured and 3,000 arbitrarily detained. Among them is the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez who advocated for nonviolent protests and remains arbitrarily detained despite the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on August 26, 2014 calling for his immediate release.The students shot and killed in the demonstrations by government soldiers and paramilitaries that work with the Maduro government.

The pattern of conduct and impunity that took place in Venezuela and Iguala with their respective 43 students is troublingly similar. A government official unhappy with student protesters orders troops to put down their demonstration and uses non-government para-military groups as shock troops to terrorize nonviolent students. This includes unarmed Venezuelan students shot and killed at point blank range. The difference between what happened in Mexico and in Venezuela is that in the Mexican case it is a local official while in the Venezuelan case national officials are involved.What happened in Venezuela?The series of events that sparked the student demonstrations in Venezuela began in Táchira on February 4, 2014 when a student at the University of Los Andes inthe Botanical Garden ofthe Universitywas the victimof an attemptedrape. Students protested that "insecurity had taken over the campus." The protest was repressed and a number of students arrested and physically mistreated by the authorities. The news of the abuse by government officials sparked additional protests.

The February 10th open letter tweeted
by student leader Juan Requesens, who has more than 528,000 followers
the message is one that is open to dialogue with the government on two
conditions 1) that students who were arrested exercising their
legitimate right to protest be freed and 2) that calling them "coup
plotters" or "terrorists" for engaging in nonviolent protests to demand
their rights is unacceptable.

February 12 in Venezuela is a national youth day and students across the country organized nonviolent
mass demonstrations in response to the earlier repression
and were met with violence by regime officials working in coordination
with paramilitary groups known as "colectivos." Students were shot in the head and killed. This escalated the protests and as the violence
increased the demands expanded and began to focus on Maduro. These facts are conveniently ignored by Ms. Pearson in her article.What happened in Mexico?
Students trashed City Hall in Iguala in 2013 after the slaying of a leftist social activist. Iguala is located 80 miles south of Mexico City in the state of Guerrero. The murdered activist's widow, Sofia Mendoza, a City Council member, blames Mayor Abarca for that killing. The Mayor and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, were believed to have ordered local police to intercept and
do away with the students who were
en route to Iguala and might have disrupted a party and speech
by Ms. Pineda on September 26, 2014 and were attacked before reaching their destination: six were killed, 25 were wounded and 43 went missing and have not been seen again.

More than 50 people have been
arrested in connection with the disappearances, the majority of them
police officers or members of the local drug gang Guerreros Unidos, all
of whom authorities say were working together. It now appears that the mayor's wife, Pineda was the
“principal operator” of Guerreros Unidos in Iguala.

The governor, Angel Aguirre, took a leave of absence because of the scandal,
which has also handed President Enrique Peña Nieto his worst crisis during his presidency. Several top leaders of the left who had given Abarca their support have now distanced themselves from the tainted mayor.

The seriousness of these planned action items would be confirmed by the February 24, 1996 shoot down where two MiGs hunted Brothers to the Rescue
planes in international airspace and used air to air missiles to
destroy two of the planes killing two pilots and two passengers based on
intelligence supplied by the WASP network.

The New York Times has had a long time bias in favor of dictatorships and making glaring omissions. The paper has had reporters such as Walter Duranty who ignored a genocide in Ukraine in the 1930s while providing a sympathetic portrayal of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin. Beginning in 1957 Herbert Matthews built up Fidel Castro's image both inside and outside of Cuba with a series of misleading articles in The New York Times. In July of 1959 Matthews reported: "[t]his is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel
Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist." Anthony De Palma has written a book on Herbert Matthews titled, "The Man Who Invented Fidel" and describes how his heroic portrayal of Fidel Castro influenced the fall of the Batista dictatorship and the consolidation of the future dictator as a national figure.

Today when Czechs gathered in Prague to give thanks to the late Vaclav Havel and celebrate 25 years of freedom they also carried red cards to protest the policies of the current Czech president Milos Zeman that are a repudiation of Havel's human rights centered foreign policy.

On May 30, 2014 the Czech First Deputy Foreign Minister Petr Drulák stated that Czech President Václav Havel's foreign policy with its emphasis on human rights was damaging to national interests stating: "I consider this a false universalism, a false idea that we should
enforce on others our idea of an ideal society we have created." The idea that human rights are universal is not a uniquely Czech idea but enshrined and signed off on by the vast majority of nations in the world in the Universal Human Rights Declaration that came into existence on December 10, 1948.

I believe that when
the new Laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize postpones receiving the
Dalai Lama until after he has accomplished his visit to China, he
makes a small compromise, a compromise which actually has some logic
to it. However, there arises a question as to whether those large,
serious compromises do not have their origin and roots in precisely
these tiny and very often more or less logical compromises.

Unfortunately, the decisions being made by the Czech government today may appear to be a small compromise in favor of commercial interests but the rejection of the applicability of universal human rights standards in favor of advancing economic interests will have grave consequences to the standing of the Czech Republic around the world as it has for the United States.

Today, President Zeman's policies led to the Czech president being pelted with eggs during his speech on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Unfortunately, the long term implications and consequences of abandoning a principled foreign policy based in human rights will be far more dire for the Czech Republic and the world.

Vaclav Havel's place in history is secure but the legacy of the current government of the Czech Republic is an entirely different matter. Freedom was regained 25 years ago and has lasted a generation which is a great triumph but to maintain and expand freedom depends on the current leadership pursuing the right policies and the people of the Czech Republic holding them accountable.

"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."- Václav Havel IHT (21 February 1990)

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

What was
achieved 25 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies
and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of
normal human relationships. In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the transition:

A
democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It
takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of
unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern
times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of
post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences
of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the
dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in
history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now
acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

Months earlier in the summer of 1989 Jiří Křižan and Václav Havel had drafted "A Few Sentences" Petition calling for the release of political prisoners and respect for human rights. Tens of thousands of Czechoslovakians signed the petition and it contributed to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia.

What took place on November 17, 1989 was the nonviolent triumph of the power of the powerless over a brutal totalitarian regime.This is in profound contrast to the centenary of the start of World War One that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy and instead ushered in two totalitarian systems: Nazism and Communism, a Second World War and a Cold War.

The
era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It
may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th
century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are
being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a
detached view.

I've had the privilege to have walked the streets and breathed the air of Prague in May of 1990, barely five months after Havel went to the Castle in December of 1989, and returned nineteen years later in October of 2009 to participate in Forum 2000 and see the changes that had taken place. Although Czechs may no longer look in awe at all that they have accomplished after walking around the center of the city visiting shops and a grocery store, and talking with Czechs over a few beers I left impressed by all that had been accomplished, and with an overwhelming sense of happiness at bearing witness to a flowering of freedom and creativity that continues to endure and thrive. Victims of dictatorship the world over have experienced first hand the solidarity of the Czech and Slovak peoples. Further evidence that 25 years later the ideals of the Velvet Revolution endure.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

"Nonviolent action is just what it says: action which is nonviolent, not inaction. This technique consists, not simply of words, but of active protest, noncooperation, and intervention. Overwhelmingly, it is a group or mass action." - Gene Sharp

Hong Kong and Havana

The British seized Havana in 1762 after laying siege to the
Spanish colonial city and occupied it from August 1762 to July 1763. During the eleven month occupation trade and
commerce exploded and Cubans became aware of the benefits of trading with
Britain and its American colonies. In 1763 Havana was returned to the Spanish
in exchange for Florida and would continue under Spanish colonial rule until 1898 followed by American occupation and independence in 1902.

In the case of Hong Kong the British took the island as a result of
the First Opium War in 1842 and held on to it as a colony until 1997 turning it
over to Communist China. However in the treaty agreement for the handover the
Peoples Republic of China made a number of commitments that called for one
country, two systems and agreed “to respect Hong Kong’s freedoms of speech,
religion, speech, association, an independent judiciary and that Hong Kong would
enjoy “a high degree of autonomy” in all matters except defense and foreign
affairs. “ China assume[d] sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997.
What was a “barren island” in 1841 is now a thriving financial metropolis whose
citizens in 2012 had a gross domestic product per capita of $37,000, four times
that of China.”

Despite the vast historical, geographic and cultural differences the question arises in the midst of the ongoing nonviolent Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong entering their 50th day: Could something like it happen in Havana?

To answer this question, a number of considerations need to be taken into account before arriving at an answer. First, what is taking place in Hong Kong? There is a freedom movement in place that preexists the British handover to Communist China.

The democracy movement in Hong Kong was born in reaction to
the June 4, 1989 massacre in Tiananmen and calls on Britain to grant Hong Kong
democracy prior to the 1997 handover. Britain responds with its Governor
carrying out democratic reforms. Every year on the anniversary of the massacre huge candlelight demonstrations are organized in remembrance of the victims.

This movement in Hong Kong has been able to demonstrate on repeated occasions the ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands people to protest against specific actions by the government to curtail their freedoms.

In July 2003 half a million people spilled onto Hong Kong's streets to protest against proposed anti-subversion laws. The government
shelved the proposed legislation and they have not been re-introduced since,
even though they are required under the Basic Law.

In April 2004 China
controversially rules out the possibility of universal suffrage in Hong
Kong in 2007 and 2008, further slowing the pace of political reform.
China also rules that its approval must be sought for any changes to
Hong Kong's election laws, giving Beijing the right to veto any moves
towards more democracy.

In December
2007 Beijing says it will allow the people of Hong Kong to directly
elect their own leader in 2017 and their legislators by 2020.

On July 29, 2012 close to 100,000 Hong Kongers march to protest the mainland’s attempted introduction of a curriculum which praises the Communist Party and compares it positively with America’s democratic system, which it chides for its gridlock and partisan debate. The curriculum is withdrawn.

On June 10, 2014 Communist China releases its first ever “white paper” for China, which asserted “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong, and demands that any chief executive elected in 2014 must “love” China—a subjective criteria Beijing will decide.

In June 2014 nearly 800,000 people cast votes in an unofficial referendum
calling for open nomination of candidates for the 2017 election, part of
campaign branded illegal by the Hong Kong government and senior Chinese
officials.

In July 2014 hundreds of thousands of
pro-democracy protesters march through Hong Kong, calling for a genuinely
democratic vote in 2017. Police arrest over 500 protesters who stage an
overnight sit-in in the main business district.

In August 2014 tens of thousands of
pro-Beijing supporters stage a massive counter-protest against the Occupy
Central civil disobedience campaign.

At the same time repression rises against democrats and in August 2014 anti-corruption officers raid
home of Jimmy Lai, a media magnate and outspoken critic of Beijing who has
supported pro-democracy activists through his publications and with donations.

On August 31, 2014 the Standing Committee of
China's National People's Congress rules out a fully democratic election for
Hong Kong leader in 2017, by imposing tight rules on nominations of candidates
who want to run in the poll that effectively places the nomination of candidates in the hands of the Beijing communist regime. It is this decision that sparks the protests that become known as the Umbrella Movement.

One lesson from the Umbrella Movement and the democracy movement in China as a whole is that the ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people into the streets is a demonstration of power but in and of itself is not sufficient to change things, but when combined with specific demands can achieve specific ends.

Meanwhile, the nonviolent Cuban pro-democracy movement was forged in a baptism by fire in the 1970s inside of Cuba's prisons initially as a human rights movement. The first nonviolent dissident movement in Cuba was the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. During the 1980s the movement emerged from the prisons and was primarily based in Havana but during the course of the 1990s spread across the country. Its greatest initial success was to document and expose the systematic violation of human rights in Cuba that led to the dictatorship's condemnation at the United Nations Human Rights Commission for over a decade. In the 2000s the opposition achieved another important milestone with the Varela Project, an initiative of the Christian Liberation Movement, that obtained more that 25,000 signatures demanding profound reforms to bring Cuba into line with international human rights standards. Crackdownsand political killings targeting democratic opposition leaders followed but the movement has proven resilient. Nevertheless, the democracy movement in Cuba, until now, has been unable to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in Cuba. However, they do have a national reach and are able to coordinate small protests.

Havana and Hong Kong have completely different histories but do have one thing in common both are cities composed of human beings. Being humans they have certain needs, among them freedom and dignity. The demonstrations in Hong Kong were not an accident and the organizers have a strategic and long term vision with specific and concrete demands.

The romantic ideal of taking to the barricades in a reenactment of Les Miserables may provide great images for the international media but forgets, at great hazard, that those 19th century uprisings in France were a dismal failure. It is also a dramatic example that blocking streets does not necessarily translate into political change.

The answer to the question "Can something like we are seeing today in Hong Kong also take place in Havana?" is yes but the follow up question should be and "What concrete concessions would such a movement be able to obtain from the current regime in power there?"

In the meantime there are two things that you, the reader, can do: 1) Demonstrate your solidarity with the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong signing this petition and 2) Demonstrate your solidarity with the democracy movement in Cuba signing this petition.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Mural of 43 missing (now assumed murdered) Mexican students

The apparent murder of 43 Mexican students taken by criminal gangs in collusion with the local authorities on September 26, 2014 is an outrage that has sparked protests across Mexico and international scrutiny. Amnesty International in a October 7, 2014 urgent action reported on what had taken place:

The 43 students remain disappeared since 26
September in the city of Iguala, Guerrero state, southern Mexico. Around
25 of them had been arrested by municipal police, while those remaining
were abducted by unidentified armed men operating with the acquiescence
of local authorities, a few hours later. All missing students are
victims of enforced disappearances.

On November 7, 2014 at a news conference Jesus Murillo Karam, the Mexican Attorney General, announced that the students disappeared in rural Ayotzinapa had been "abducted by police on order of a local mayor, and are believed to have been turned over to a gang that killed them and burned their bodies before throwing some remains in a river." Putting an end to the press conference Murillo raised his eyebrows and said: "Ya me canse" or "I'm tired" and has now gone viral with the hashtags #YaMeCanse and #estoycansado.

For Cubans this massacre twenty years after the July 13, 1994 “13 de Marzo” tugboat massacre when 37 Cubans were massacred by government officials is particularly shocking and strikes close to home as does the indifference manifested online by Nestle that made a joke out of the murder of these students to promote their Crunch candy bar. Twenty years later in July of 2014 in New York City, Washington DC, Miami and in Cuba demonstrations in the memory of the 37 massacred Cubans were held. All these years later and the victims are not forgotten. This will also be the case for these 43 students. This is a crime that will not be forgotten but remembered for years to come.

Both in the 1994 murder of 37 Cuban refugees and the 2014 murder of 43 Mexican students a Pope spoke out on behalf of the victims. In the first case it was Pope John Paul II and in the latter Pope Francis. It is an outrage that 20 years after 37 men, women and children were massacred that not only the individuals responsible have yet to face justice but that the remains of the victims have not been recovered because of the intransigence and complicity of the Cuban government. Decades have passed but the names of the victims are not forgotten the list of names circulated on the date of the massacre and their faces remembered. The same is now happening with the names and faces of the 43 Mexican students.

It is a shocking outrage that a crime on a roughly equivalent scale in terms of the number of dead has been committed in Mexico. At least in Mexico, it appears that the lowest levels of this criminal act have been arrested. Let us hope that all those responsible for this atrocity be held accountable and the students (in whatever condition they are found) be returned to their loved ones. At the same time let us send a message to Nestle and boycott their candy bars in a sign of protest for their disrespect of the victims of this massacre.

The names of the 43 disappeared normalista students of Ayotzinapa who the government of Mexico now assumes have been murdered are listed below and cry out for justice:

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads
(over our heads)
And we kissed,
as though nothing could fall
(nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day

It is an appropriate song for the occasion. Prior to the start of the song the pictures of the victims who were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall from 1969 through 1989 were shown on a giant outdoor screen. Walking through the Berlin Wall Memorial and listening to the names of the victims and seeing them is a powerful experience that all who visit the German capital should experience.